PSF Buzz NE Simon Wakeman

Simon Wakeman (@simonwakeman) speaking about social media at Medway Council:

– Fuse Festival – FB and Twitter– Facebook allowed to flag up activities, report festival and allow communication with festival goers. See it as a customer service channel not an online billboard. Needs dedicated staff time for new content and interaction.– Twitter – handed over to other staff within council for first time.– FB – added value for ‘fans’ – exclusives and deals for the festival– FB pages for specific events / whole council– Medway view is to use FB / social media for things people care about rather than the whole organisation (I like this approach!)– Medway on Twitter – publish news releases and jobs through RSS; hand publish interesting / useful stuff– Twitter demonstrated power in Feb. News story about stance against airport expansion – gained 100 followers. View endorsed by RSPB – reached another 720, RT again – another 500. It’s about the network and who is following you and the spread out of your message. Not just the ppl directly following you but those following your followers. How to track this??? Good story but could have gone further if it was a bad story.– Twitter interesting content…monitor and respond (Tweetbeat); be human; respond to rumours / campaign groups– Facebook – monitoring the ‘Medway p**s up’ group. When group started growing (thousands) beyond capacity of venue, passed onto relevant departments and Police who stopped event. Bad PR in local press about council. Became mainstream story and bad press on the FB group.– role of socmed in monitoring issues in managment – engage directly or pass to relevant orgs; correct facts but haven’t yet responded directly on FB. Approach through other channels.– more than comms channel.– Needs different skills – not just comms / web team but anyone using socmed to engage– likely to see lines between PR / comms / marketing – see new roles emerging in comms team– new policies and processes, socmed usage (session later by @carlhaggerty)– disruption to traditional hierarchies – officers who haven’t traditionally been forward facing may now be– groups form in communities that would be slower or not exist offline. digitally-enabled communitiesduty to involve / promote democracy– more collaborative local gov / more participation